Preliminary Exercise 8: Practicing Camerawork Day 1

Preliminary Exercise 8: Practicing Camerawork Day 1

Introduction paragraph

Camerawork is the way a scene is filmed. Camerawork is important in film because it can set the tone or mood for the film's narrative. When planning camera shots it's important to consider your shot size, camera angles, framing, and composition. Shot sizes refers to the size of the frame of the scene such as a cowboy shot which shows the subject from the mid thigh up. Camera angles is the way a camera is placed and positioned for the scene, a example of this would be a point of view camera angle which shows what the subject is seeing. Framing is the presentation of visuals inside of a film. This can go hand in hand with how many people are in the shot like two actors in one scene will make a "Two-shot". Composition is the arrangement of scene elements inside a film. Balance and symmetry take major roles in this. A cinematographer is responsible for camera work inside of a film. Roger Deakins is a perfect example with many nominated films such as the Shawshank Redemption and Fargo. Me and my team have to develop camera work skills as it will be useful and essential later when we make our film introduction, knowing these skills will aid us tremendously and help us give a great product.

Reflection Paragraph

The assignment was to practice camera work and get a feel for it with eight shots of varying camera work and composition. Me and my partner learned a lot about camera work through this and became more versed in this subject. I was the camera guy and my partner directed every shot. We used our home classroom and the hallway outside to take our shots and we had a storyline for our shots which to sum it up included the life of a bullied girl who fought back. This exercise was fun and easy as we had our storyboards to use and plan out our shots. We did accomplish the goal of taking our shots and we executed this in a few ways. Dorine B. and I used our fellow classmates to act out our planned shots and we used my IPhone 11 to take these shots and make them as clear as possible. I would say we were well versed and experienced in using it. We learnt how to properly take camera shots that follow composition and listed angles and we learned how to set them up.